"Chanorexia" Becoming An Epidemic Among Teen Boys

By
Anna Breslaw

Jun 17, 2013

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A disturbing new trend in teenagers contradicts the popular assumption that eating disorders are largely a female problem: According to data from 2011, boys in Los Angeles were just as likely as girls to use laxatives and diet pills without a doctor's approval — in fact, they were .1 percent more likely to, at 6.2 percent compared with girls' 6.1, according to an article in the L.A. Times.

One might ascribe this to the fact that L.A. is obviously more concerned with appearances than average Nowheresville, Ohio — being, after all, the home of aspiring teen hearrthrobs and pushy parent/managers — but Chicago, Houston, and Charlotte, North Carolina are also major offenders. Researchers say that the spike in adolescent male eating disorders is due to ubiquitous images of buff guys in the media.

Now that it's popular to objectify men onscreen as well as women (say, Chay Tates as a walking, talking six-pack in Magic Mike), boys are facing the same sort of ingrained anxiety for the perfect body that girls have for decades. (It's definitely not a coincidence that the eating disorder rate in women was noticed in the '90s, right around the heroin-chic look hit the runways and billboards of America.)

The rate of boys suffering from eating disorders nationwide rose an estimated 53 percent between 1999 and 2009, but parents still have a difficult time getting physicians to recognize and diagnose anorexia or bulimia in their sons. Often, it's written off until the disease has taken a serious toll. Says one 19-year-old who remembers high school being a place of intense pressure for boys to have perfect physiques: "Men are pressured to have as little fat as possible — but you've got to pretend like you don't watch what you eat. I can see why a lot of younger kids get sucked into a vortex and end up doing bad things."

Incidentally, it's not just the muscle-to-fat ratio that men are becoming worried about. Take the case of Nicholas Ryan, who spent $5,000 on filler and Botox injections in attempt to restructure his face like Ryan Gosling's. :(